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3 Biggest Frauds of All Time

The Hope and Change Presidency. The economy, foreign policy, domesticm policy, Afstan, cash for clunkers, spendulous, cap and trade, health care reform – pick whichever seems the most important to you and run with it.

Cold Fusion gets an honorable mention, but didn’t quite make the grade to be one of the big 3. Plus, I needed room to take a gratuitous swipe at the magic unicorn of hope n change.

The difference between AGW and cold fusion is that Fleischmann and Pons, original claimants of cold fusion technology, made their materials and methods available for widespread scrutiny. This scrutiny quickly led to objective observers finding problems with the methodologies and conclusions, and challenging them. If only a similar tract had been followed in the AGW debate – who knows how many trillions of dollars could have been saved and used for something productive. As for that “making your data and methods available for others to replicate your work” – it’s really not that novel of a concept – it’s called the scientific method.

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“Sorry, can’t go along with you on that one. Why did 2 successive DoE enquiries choose not to pursue cold fusion?”

Both DoE panels recommended that cold fusion research be funded, but the DoE turned down the recommendation. The second panel final report says: “The nearly unanimous opinion of the reviewers was that funding agencies should entertain individual, well-designed proposals for experiments that address specific scientific issues relevant to the question of whether or not there is anomalous energy production in Pd/D systems . . .” (The first report was not quite as emphatic.) You can read the 2004 panel members comments and recommendations here:

In any case, other nations and governments support the research. This is discussed in the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency report featured on the first page, published Nov. 13. See also the sponsors the most recent conference: the ENEA (the Italian DoE), Italian Physical Society, the Italian Chemical Society, The National Research Council (CNR).

“Are you suggesting that ‘the man’ wanted to suppress it?”

I have letters and books published by the people who want to suppress it. Read them and judge for yourself. See, for example, the book by Huizenga, or this:

“After all, cold fusion would be the greatest boon to humankind – ever.”

I think so, but the people who oppose the research are convinced it is fraud, and that the researchers are “criminals and lunatics.” That is what they have written in the Washington Post, the New Scientist, Scientific American and elsewhere. You have to realize that academic politics can be unforgiving.

“Everything I have ever read – EVERYTHING – states that no one was able to reproduce Fleishmann and Pons’ results . . . ”

I cannot address that because I do not know what you have read. As I mentioned, I have several hundred peer-reviewed papers from major journals written by scientist who say they did reproduce it. See, for example:

“. . . but no one else could obtain their results using their methodologies.”

That is incorrect. Within a year roughly 100 major labs replicated, such Los Alamos and China Lake. The used Fleischmann and Pons’ methods and achieved the same results. By the late ’90s well over 200 labs had replicated, and in some cases the effect was measured at far higher levels, at over 100 W with no input power, with energy amounting to 50 to 300 MJ from a device weighing a fraction of a gram, and tritium at millions of times above background.

These replications were published in mainstream, peer-reviewed journal papers. I have a collection of 1,200 of these papers copied from the library at Los Alamos, plus 2,500 others from conference proceedings and published directly by Los Alamos, BARC, EPRI and others. You will find the list of papers and about 1,000 full text papers at LENR-CANR.org.

It is widely believed that the effect was not replicated, but this is a myth.

Sorry, can’t go along with you on that one. Why did 2 successive DoE enquiries choose not to pursue cold fusion? Are you suggesting that “the man” wanted to suppress it? After all, cold fusion would be the greatest boon to humankind – ever. Everything I have ever read – EVERYTHING – states that no one was able to reproduce Fleishmann and Pons’ results – and that missing Compton edge is a bit problematic, isn’t it?

Anyways – don’t really care about cold fusion – I merely used it to segue into how science should work, and how it didn’t work in the case of AGW. Champion cold fusion if you want – I’ll neither help nor hinder in that effort. If you’re going to pull off a cold fusion reactor – do it soon so we can lay AGW to rest with a resounding THUD while simultaneously meeting our energy needs in a non-polluting fashion. I see it as a win-win.

“Sorry, can’t go along with you on that one. Why did 2 successive DoE enquiries choose not to pursue cold fusion?”

Both DoE panels recommended that cold fusion research be funded, but the DoE turned down the recommendation. The second panel final report says: “The nearly unanimous opinion of the reviewers was that funding agencies should entertain individual, well-designed proposals for experiments that address specific scientific issues relevant to the question of whether or not there is anomalous energy production in Pd/D systems . . .” (The first report was not quite as emphatic.) You can read the 2004 panel members comments and recommendations here:

In any case, other nations and governments support the research. This is discussed in the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency report featured on the first page, published Nov. 13. See also the sponsors the most recent conference: the ENEA (the Italian DoE), Italian Physical Society, the Italian Chemical Society, The National Research Council (CNR).

“Are you suggesting that ‘the man’ wanted to suppress it?”

I have letters and books published by the people who want to suppress it. Read them and judge for yourself. See, for example, the book by Huizenga, or this: lenr-canr.org/acrobat/LENRCANRthedoelies.pdf

“After all, cold fusion would be the greatest boon to humankind – ever.”

I think so, but the people who oppose the research are convinced it is fraud, and that the researchers are “criminals and lunatics.” That is what they have written in the Washington Post, the New Scientist, Scientific American and elsewhere. You have to realize that academic politics can be unforgiving.

“Everything I have ever read – EVERYTHING – states that no one was able to reproduce Fleishmann and Pons’ results . . . ”

I cannot address that because I do not know what you have read. As I mentioned, I have several hundred peer-reviewed papers from major journals written by scientist who say they did reproduce it.

Fair enough – LENR research may be moving back into the mainstream – my physics training is on the radiation therapy side of things, so I can’t comment.

And using the word “fraud” for cold fusion in its original form is probably overly harsh. Fleishmann and Pons obviously believed they had achieved LENR – but no one else could obtain their results using their methodologies. And that’s the point – scientists should protect their intellectual property, but once they publish results, they need to provide enough information for others to independently verify their work.